Valerio Adami (born 17 March 1935) is an Italian painter. Educated at the ''Accademia di Brera'' in

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

, he has since worked in both

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

and

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. His art is influenced by Pop Art. Ritratto di Valerio Adami

Biography

Adami was born in

Bologna Bologna ( , , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy. It is the List of cities in Italy, seventh most populous city in Italy, with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nationalities. Its M ...

. In 1945, at the age of ten, he began to study

painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

under the instruction of Felice Carena. He was accepted into the

Brera Academy The Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera (), also known as the or Brera Academy, is a state-run tertiary public academy of fine arts in Milan, Italy. It shares its history, and its main building, with the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan's main public mu ...

(Accademia di Brera) in 1951, and there he studied as a draughtsman until 1954 in the studio of Achille Funi. In 1955 he went to

, where he met and was influenced by

Roberto Matta Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren (; November 11, 1911 – November 23, 2002), usually known simply as Matta, also as Sebastián Matta or Roberto Matta, was one of Chile's best-known Painting, painters and a seminal figure in 20th ...

and

Wifredo Lam Wifredo Óscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla (; December 8, 1902 – September 11, 1982), better known as Wifredo Lam, was a Cuban artist who sought to portray and revive the enduring Afro-Cubans, Afro-Cuban spirit and culture. Inspired by ...

. His first solo exhibition came in 1959 in

. In his early career, Adami's works were expressionistic, but by the time of his second exhibition in 1964 at

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in North Hesse, northern Hesse, in Central Germany (geography), central Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel (region), Kassel and the d ...

, he had developed a style of painting reminiscent of French cloisonnism, featuring regions of flat color bordered by black lines. Unlike

Gauguin Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer, whose work has been primarily associated with the Post-Impressionist and Symbolist movements. He was also an influ ...

, however, Adami's subjects were highly stylized and often presented in fragments, as seen in ''Telescoping Rooms'' (1965). In the 1970s, Adami began to address

politics Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...

in his art, and incorporated subject matter such as modern European history,

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

, and

mythology Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...

. In 1971, he and his brother Gioncarlo created the film ''Vacances dans le désert''. In 1974 he illustrated a Helmut Heissenbuttel poem, ''Occasional Poem No. 27. Ten Lessons on the Reich'' with ten original lithographs . In 1975, the philosopher

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, ...

devoted a long essay, "+R: Into the Bargain", to Adami's work, using an exhibition of Adami's drawings as a pretext to discuss the function of "the letter and the proper name ''in painting''", with reference to "narration, technical reproduction, ideology, the phoneme, the biographeme, and politics". There were four

retrospective A retrospective (from Latin ', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in software development, popular culture, and the arts. ...

exhibits of Adami's work between 1985 and 1998. They were held in Paris, the Centre Julio-Gonzalez de Valence (

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

, and

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

. In 2010, the Boca Raton Museum of Art devoted a special exhibit to Adami's paintings and drawings.Michael Mills
"The Boca Museum of Art Introduces Us to an Italian Artist We're Unlikely to Know"
''Broward-Palm Beach New Times'', November 4, 2010, accessed September 10, 2011.

References

External links

*
Biography and WorksValerio Adami
Art Net
Adami at Galleri GKM
*
Valerio Adami Archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Adami, Valerio 1935 births Living people 20th-century Italian painters Italian male painters 21st-century Italian painters Italian modern painters Brera Academy alumni Italian contemporary artists 20th-century Italian male artists 21st-century Italian male artists